The staff and volunteers at 18 Reasons, a nonprofit cooking school in San Francisco that teaches families how to shop and cook on a budget, share an easy menu for a healthy meal–and talk about the issues facing the communities they cook with.

Cooking & BBQ Sauces

Just as the clothes make the man, the sauce can really make or break your food. A perfectly roasted brisket will be succulent and delicious almost no matter what you put on it, but the right sauce can certainly take it over the top from the ordinary to the extraordinary. But sauces can be quite labor intensive to make, and sometimes, you’d rather put your focus on the main event while cooking. Williams-Sonoma’s cooking & BBQ sauces include everything from gravy base for Thanksgiving dinner to curry sauce for a midweek Asian feast. With options for meat-eaters and vegetarians alike, this section has plenty of versatile sauce selections for you to choose from for multi-course special-occasion feasts and quick post-work dinners.

Our slow-cooker and braising sauces are the perfect choice for a delicious weekend dinner that tastes amazing and requires just a little bit of prep work from you. They’re perfect to use when there’s a game on or if you have other kitchen activities you need to get to, like making your breakfast muffins for the week and prepping ingredients for sandwiches and salads for lunches at work. With flavors ranging from chile verde sauce for pulled-pork tacos to coq au vin sauce for a hearty chicken stew, you’ll find plenty of shortcut options for an amazing meal that takes many fewer steps than it would have if you made the sauce from scratch.

If you like cooking outdoors on your grill or in a smoker, you may be more worried about getting your surface temperature just right and getting the right low and slow balance on your meat than you are with the sauce. Even so, you don’t want to neglect the sauce entirely. After all, with its range of tangy, sweet and spicy flavor profiles, BBQ sauce allows you to put an entirely new spin on an old dish each time you eat it. Our BBQ sauces and meat glazes let you deliver a tasty flavor complement to your expertly grilled or smoked pork, chicken, beef, fish and more.

When it comes to pasta and pizza, the sauce can sometimes be the most important part of the meal, especially if you’re eschewing complex toppings and opting for a plain pizza or pasta dish that shows reverent respect for the basic building blocks of your meal. But no matter what you put on top of your pasta or pizza, our sauces can help you ensure a delicious dish that satisfies all of your flavor desires. From favored classics like tomato basil marinara and alfredo sauce to inventive twists like pumpkin or lemon, pepper and basil pasta sauce, we offer plenty of pasta and pizza sauce options to tempt your taste buds.

Our cooking & BBQ sauces can also help you keep an eye on the quality of the food you eat, giving you an easy way to make your own healthy versions of take-out food at home. Our Asian sauces cover classic dishes such as pad Thai and Madras curry, allowing you to decide what kind of vegetables and meats you want to include in the mix. These sauces are the first step to crafting a veggie-packed and low-fat alternative to the meaty, greasy dishes that you know and love.

These cooking & BBQ sauces are perfect for your own pantry, but they can also make excellent gifts or additions to food-filled care packages for loved ones who live far away. You can browse our other food categories to see if there are any appealing options to accompany the sauces so your gift recipient can make a complete meal from the items you have delivered to their door. Some of our pasta sauces, for example, come packaged with delicious gourmet pasta, making it easy for even a novice chef to create something fresh and wonderful at home.

Description:
A longtime favorite with Williams Sonoma customers, this
peanut sauce is based on a traditional recipe from China's Sichuan province, where bold, spicy food reigns supreme. The all-natural sauce delivers a complex blend of spicy-hot and sweet-tart flavors while ...

Description:
Inspired by farmers' market bounty, our light, summery
pasta sauce makes it easy to enjoy the fresh flavors of the season all year long. To make the sauce, we combine ripe tomatoes with sauteed garlic, then simmer with sweet, ...